Dirge Without Music
by mcgoogles
Summary: Ginny, Hermione, Ron and Harry reflect during DH, set to the Millay poem. Canon-compliant, but not much action and a lot of angst, it has some romance but is mostly genfic. Rated for the emotional content.
1. Ginny

_I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground_

_So it is, and so it shall be, for so it has been, for time out of mind_

_Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely; crowned_

_With lilies and the laurel they go; but I am not resigned._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge Without Music

Ginny's fairly certain she understands Harry better than anyone, which is precisely why she isn't outraged by his horrible explanation of why he's breaking it off. She knows what he's trying to say, and she understands why he's saying it.

She understands that this is something she cannot accompany them on, as much as she might like to. It is for the three of them alone, and she'd hurt them more than she'd help, because of the Trace and her inability to Apparate. Though she might appreciate a little more information about what they're doing, she knows that as more and more people learn a secret, the less safe it is. After all, who is she to say that she would not reveal it - whatever it is - while under the Cruciatus anyway?

After her first detention with the Carrows, she realizes that she might not hold up under torture. After her fifth, she realizes that she could and might go insane, like Neville's parents.

And she knows that Harry's decision to leave her has nothing to do with her safety, or either of them losing interest, but with the plain fact that Harry cannot be distracted from his task (she refuses to use the word destiny, as if he had no choice in the matter), and that she would be exactly that, a distraction.

She loves him (that's the difference between dating Harry and dating Dean), and she doesn't want to lose him, but Ginny knows that the odds are slim of Harry surviving this war. The Daily Prophet suggested that Harry was destined to defeat Voldemort, and she knows that it is both right and wrong. Harry is destined to defeat Voldemort because of his personality. He is as connected to Riddle as she is, and Voldemort has taken too many people and threatened too many others for Harry to do nothing when it is in his power to finish it. And she knows it is. She has no reasoning to explain it, but she knows.

She has faith in Harry, Ron, and Hermione to destroy Voldemort. Ginny decided that she would call him Voldemort when Dumbledore died. Of course, she now calls him You-Know-Who because of the Taboo, but in her head, he remains Voldemort. She did wonder if it wouldn't be more defiant to call him Riddle, or Tom, but once she saw him in the Department of Mysteries and realized exactly how inhuman he has become, decided he did not deserve a human name. If she thinks about the boy (man?) she knew from the diary, he is Tom. He was still human then, however twisted his mind.

Ginny doesn't know exactly what the three of them are up to, but she has a fairly decent guess. She knows Tom, very well (too well, she thinks sometimes), and she knows that he hates his Muggle roots and believes that dying is something like being a squib – a failure that isn't really your fault, but that makes you inferior anyway.

Ginny understands Tom Riddle better than anyone (with the possible exception of Harry), because when he possessed her, she was in his mind as much as he was in her hers. But she also knows that knowledge is a weapon, and that this task is not something she can share in.

She won't sit on the sidelines of this war, and so she made her own task. She resurrected the D.A, and with Neville, she runs it. Luna helped, too, but she didn't come back after Christmas, and Ginny can't help but to fear the worst.

But this is war, and they can't afford to stop fighting and mourn. They have to protect the children here from the Carrows and she will do so, no matter how many times she gets hit with the Cruciatus or gets whipped or stuck in the dungeons. She and Neville share that grim understanding that it's better that they get tortured than an 11-year old whose only crime was misunderstanding.

Sometimes Neville reminds her too much of Harry, and she has to bite back the flood of emotions that never fails to arise at these times. She may have had a crush on the Boy Who Lived at 11, but she fell in love with Harry at 15 (she knows she's young but she can't trivialize her feelings by saying she merely fancies him). But part of the reason why she fell in love with him was because he was the Boy Who Lived – every bit as selflessly noble as her 11-year-old self could have imagined.

As the days go on, more and more of the lies she told herself to get through it are stripped away. She supposes it's a side effect of torture – pain makes you reevaluate your priorities.

One day, as Alecto Carrow smirks down at Ginny in between bouts of the Cruciatus (she's saying something along the lines of "Not so bloody lively now, eh?") Ginny lets go. She can't pretend she doesn't love Harry; she can't pretend she doesn't know anything about where he went; she can't pretend she isn't enduring this for him (she could manage an escape to rival Fred and George's, if she chose). And even if she could, she doesn't want to.

She was stupid, she thinks, to imagine she could undergo the Cruciatus as though it were a particularly difficult Quidditch practice – that she could simply grit her teeth and ignore the pain.

No, she thinks as Alecto puts the curse back on, this pain will not be ignored, and she screams (she thought she could hold back those screams, before she'd ever had the curse put on her). And if she's under long enough, it's not even about holding on for Harry anymore; it's just about survival.

Afterwards, in the common room, she sees that same realization on the faces of her fellow classmates and D.A. members. When Neville (brave Neville, who has lead them so well this year) asks her if she's all right, she pauses.

"Define alright," she says in a voice that rasps from screaming.

Neville opens his mouth, shuts it, and says, "Are you in need of emergency medical treatment?"

This phrase has become something of an inside joke among her friends because of the frequency of injury in both detentions and D.A. practice sessions, and so Ginny dutifully laughs and shakes her head, even though she doesn't really think it's funny.

It's just another reminder of how different things have become. Last year, she wouldn't have dreamed of Hogwarts perverted like this. Last year, the worst detention she'd ever had was when Snape made her disembowel three barrels full of horned toads (without gloves) because she Bat-Bogey-hexed Malfoy. This year, it involved running away from a pack of bloodthirsty werewolves in the Forbidden Forest.

This is war, she thinks. She loves Harry, she just might lose him, and there's absolutely nothing she can do to change that. She will continue to fight, because that's all there is to do.


	2. Hermione

_Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you_

_Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust_

_A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew_

_A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost._

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

When Ron left, Hermione began fighting her way through the days.

It's ridiculous, she thought, that his absence could make such a difference, especially since he had done little but whine about the search ever since it had begun. If he wanted to have a more definite plan, why didn't make it up himself? Hadn't he seen that Harry wasn't withholding information and was, in fact, as lost, both figuratively and literally, as they were?

But it no longer mattered, because Ron was gone. Hermione hadn't, at first, been able to reconcile herself with the idea that he had actually left them, and that she would probably never see him again.

Whenever this morbid thought occurred to her, she invariably had to shove it away. She wouldn't think it, because as much as it galled her to admit it, she needed Ron in her life. She needed Ron to remind her why she fought.

Ron was a vital part of her, and his absence, regardless of the circumstances, she thought, was slowly killing her. She was pretty sure Harry felt that way too, because Ron completed the trio. And it wasn't completion in the sense that he is just a part of the group; it was completion in the sense that without him, there is a gaping hole between Harry and her.

Harry is the hero – it is his job to selflessly rage against the dying of the light (she'd been reading poetry to pass the time) no matter the personal cost. She is the brain – she provides the essential knowledge, the obscure facts, that they need to continue with this seemingly impossible quest. But Ron is the heart. It is he who makes them laugh, who provides the boost they need to continue when all seems lost, who reminds them that there is more than death and destruction in this world.

The truth is, neither Hermione nor Harry can effectively continue the quest without Ron's heart.

She understands now how love is the power Voldemort (she'll say the name in her head, if not aloud) knows not, and how it could defeat him. Love will defeat him because it is the love the three of them have for each other that sustains them, that allows them to do what seems impossible. Voldemort has never known any kind of love and so he can't understand them; can't anticipate their actions; can't manipulate them as he did with so many others.

But now Ron has disappeared into the perpetual mist and fog that surrounds them wherever they go, thanks to the dementors, and that love is splintered. It is not gone – after all they have been through she doubts if it will ever be gone – but it has been shattered.

She still loves Ron, and she's fairly certain Harry does too, although she doesn't think they love him the same way. Harry and Ron are brothers (she imagines that James Potter and Sirius Black shared a similar bond); she and Ron are… something else.

She has more than platonic feelings for him (as utterly ridiculous as the phrase sounds, it is the best she could come up with at the time, despite how inadequate it seemed); she admitted that to herself after the Yule Ball, and to Ginny during the Lavender period. It seems so distant now – was she really that petty? Granted, Ron had hurt her, but now she would give anything to see him, to talk to him, to know that he is alive.

And it is this forgiveness that tells her she truly loves him. She doesn't have a crush on him, she doesn't just fancy him, she loves him, and she can eventually see spending the rest of her life with him (at least, she can't imagine having a happy life without Ron).

It is ironic, but somehow fitting, that she should realize the depth of her feelings for him **now**, after the biggest rift yet has been opened between them. But that is how their relationship works. Every time they have a real fight (Hermione doesn't count the stupid bickering about homework, which is more like sexual tension anyway), they are closer when they make up then they had been before. For example, after what Hermione refers to as the Lavender period, they came to an unspoken understanding that neither would date someone else. Hermione, in that small part of her mind which she still allows to think about Ron, can't help but to hope that this fight will be the one to move them into an actual relationship rather than this awkward semblance of "just friends".

She resolutely ignores the voice that wonders if they'll ever get that chance.

And as the days go by with no sign of him, she continues to live in the hopes that one day, after this god-awful war is done, she will see him again.

------------------------

When he does return, she doesn't at first believe it's him. She was lying on her bunk, attempting to sleep but really staring aimlessly into the darkness. Her thoughts are restless, flying around in circles (she detests this phenomenon), and she was no closer to understanding anything that had happened that night.

Harry had returned to the tent with Ron behind him, and they were both inexplicably soaking wet. Harry had muttered something about Ron saving his life and destroying the locket (the locket which she hated with a passion) and acting as though he had completely forgiven Ron. She had attacked Ron (who, strangely, didn't retaliate in his usual manner), her anger at him returned full force, but Harry has stopped her. Ron had told a strange story about her voice coming about of the Deluminator and saying his name, and a strange ball of light that led him to them – to her. She had, long before any of them had known about Horcruxes, read a book about Dumbledore's inventions, including the Deluminator, and, though she still did not understand everything she had read, understood that Ron must have strong feelings for her for this to be possible. Of course, the bond between the three of them was stronger than most bonds of friendship, but she didn't know if it would have been enough, and if it wasn't, did that mean Ron loved her as she loved him?

Ron had seemed different too. Older, more mature; willing to own up for his mistakes, something he had always hated. Almost as though he had become an adult. Certainly he looked older – there were shadows under his eyes, speaking to untold sleepless nights. And the sincerity in his voice when he apologized was clear, but Hermione wouldn't – couldn't – just forgive him right then, not after all she had been through.

She knew she would forgive him quickly, though, because she did love him. It was incredible how simply seeing him, hearing him talk, knowing he was _there_, made her whole day brighter. And seeing the changes in him only made her resolve to survive this war even greater, because when it was all over, Hermione would settle things with Ron (she could see… something… in his eyes when he looked at her – like he was looking at the sun; like she was the center of his world). They had danced around for seven years, and that was enough.

Original A/N:_ So that was the second stanza of the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and the phrase "rage against the dying of the light" is from "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. So next up are the boys! Thanks for the reviews._

**_Updated A/N: This story disappeared for a while, until someone pointed out to me that it had died. I do have to apologize, though, as the next two chapters might be a long time in coming... but any advice that anyone has would be MUCH appreciated. Thanks (and sorry)!_**


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